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While the first wave of digital fraud was caused by the migration of physical credit cards to digital payments, a second wave is now seeing fraud move to mobile applications.
By offering multiple products and services on a single platform, superapps and digital wallets risk complicating fraud risk management. In addition to payments, companies now have to deal with diverse types of fraud, such as account takeovers, fake registrations, promotional code exploitation, loyalty fraud and other reward-based loopholes.
Cybercrime was traditionally the domain of professional hackers who break into enterprises and governments to steal funds or personal data, or to cause reputational harm. But the arrival of a more digital-native generation has democratised their techniques, enabling opportunists to exploit online platforms, such as mobile apps, given their immense popularity.
Blinded by perceptions that mobile environments are more secure and being unaware of the malicious tools available to fraudsters, many businesses are unprepared. Such tools can change device profiles, manipulate physical or internet addresses, clone apps and even tamper with them.
Consumers are readily granting access to their smartphone data to enjoy a more personalised user experience, but by doing so they often become collateral damage in the ongoing hunt by fraudsters for financial gain.
“We have seen companies suffer tens of millions of dollars in fraud losses in a matter of days,” says Justin Lie, founder and chief executive of SHIELD, a global cyberfraud protection company that leverages over a decade of domain intelligence and artificial intelligence (AI) to help enterprises prevent fraud in real time.
“This can be business-ending for smaller startups or fledgling companies. 7-Eleven in Japan lost half a million dollars and shut down its new app offering mobile payments within a month of launch.
There is a new war being waged. Mobile apps require a different class of fraud detection and prevention solutions and tactics
“The more unsecured and profitable mobile landscape has drawn fraudsters who traditionally target ecommerce platforms. There is a new war being waged and the battleground is your smartphone. As a new attack vector ground, mobile apps require a different class of fraud detection and prevention solutions and tactics.”
New weapons and attack vectors
Sophisticated fraud syndicates employ customised tools to mimic the behaviour of real users. Tampered apps, in particular, open many new possibilities for them. The more services an app offers, the more opportunities there are to exploit.
When fraudsters constantly change their attack patterns, traditional static defence mechanisms are ineffective. Solutions need to be precise, targeted and adaptable to minimise false positives while blocking fraud accurately. Otherwise, businesses risk significantly hindering their customers’ user experience and suffering revenue losses.
At the same time, growing competition to establish market dominance in the digital age has driven the rise of online promotions and reward offers designed to lure consumers with attractive discounts. Popularised by the likes of WeChat and Alipay, these discounts are common on superapps such as Grab and Careem, while ride-hailing companies like Uber give out free rides to attract customers.
Fraud on these kinds of platforms can be cheap to carry out and difficult to trace. The result is a difficult operating environment for businesses relying on online and mobile-based commerce, with smartphone devices at the centre of a new battleground for fraud.
What companies must do
Companies need to urgently assess, if their fraud mitigation measures cover the threats and vulnerabilities that they face.
The first question they need to ask themselves is, do their fraud attacks only happen at the point of payment? Fraud commonly happens across the entire user journey. Promotion codes attract not only new users but fraudsters too.
Secondly, do companies know the real extent of the fraud? Fraudsters often create multiple fake accounts, fund these accounts with illicit money and then proceed to divert these funds through a complex network before cashing them out: a classic case of money laundering, but on a new platform.
Thirdly, is the company’s anti-fraud solution end-to-end, future-proof and hyper-relevant? End-to-end solutions capture and block fraud at every checkpoint, ensuring complete visibility alongside a fraud mitigation approach that can be calibrated according to the needs and risk propensity at each checkpoint.
Solutions would also do well to keep up with the latest fraud trends and tools from a global perspective, ideally through a global threat intelligence network, which helps companies block emerging fraud.
Because every business is different, a good anti-fraud solution ensures relevancy of their clients digital ecosystem by accounting for the unique circumstances and requirements.
How SHIELD can help
Founded in 2008, SHIELD was the first organisation to introduce an instant fraud prevention solution, securing the entire user journey for enterprises. Its AI engine crunches millions of datapoints, performing real-time pattern recognition to identify fraud. SHIELD’s self-learning algorithms constantly adapt to deliver risk assessments for each user activity in less than 70 milliseconds, ensuring its clients’ customers can continue to transact without affecting user experience.
SHIELD profiles more than seven billion devices and 500 million user accounts globally. The plug-and-play nature of its solutions helps simplify fraud management and secure digital ecosystems from end to end through a single application programming interface, or API. Fraud attacks against their clients are uploaded in real time to its global intelligence network, enabling other clients around the world to block similar attacks.
“The future of cyberfraud is AI and it’s already here,” says Irene Brime, co-founder and managing director of SHIELD. “Fraudsters are using more advanced scripts and, increasingly, machine-learning to fine-tune and vary their attacks. As machine-learning and AI becomes more accessible, any opportunist has the potential to be a fraudster.
“SHIELD’s mission is to be the only autonomous risk intelligence solution that enterprises need to scale without risk. With end-to-end protection of the user journey, enterprises are kept safe from fraud while ensuring their products and services reach the largest number of real users, maximising their profit margins. We help clients achieve a better and safer customer experience, making the internet a safer place for everyone.”
For more information please visit shield.com


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BOE decided to surprise the local market. The company introduced “the industry’s first ultra-large 8K OLED display.
It should be noted that this is only a prototype. A prototype that aims to show where the company thinks TV makers will head in the near future.
The device received a 95-inch OLED display with a resolution of 8K and a refresh rate of 120 Hz. In this case, the peak brightness is 800 cd / sq.m.
Among other things, 10-bit color representation and support for HDR technology can be noted. Also coverage of the DCI-P3 color space is 99%.
Of course, today such TVs will cost some unrealistic money, even if someone decides to produce and sell them. But over time, the story that has already happened with 4K models will most likely repeat itself and 8K OLED TVs will become more or less accessible to the majority.

domain: news


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On Monday, we watched this year’s CES keynote by Qulcomm CEO Dr. Paul Jacobs in a combination of awe and amusement. Though the message was presented in an interesting way, the significance of mobile in the new year is undeniable–and everyone has their own thoughts on exactly what role mobile will play.
74% U.S. smartphone users get real-time, location-based information on phones. MarketingLand shared its five predictions on Mobile Marketing in 2013 as location technology is further integrated into our daily lives.
The competition within the mobile search space will heat up in 2013, as mobile marketing has emerged as effective tool for direct response. Accoding to Direct Marketing News, 70% of mobile searches lead to action within one hour versus within one month for online searches. In fact, most consumers actually welcome ads on their mobile device.
Finally, its not too late to make a New Years resolution! This week, LinkedIn announced it doubled its size since 2011. The site now has over 200 million members representing over 200 countries and territories. Anyone who has been resisting the professional networking site should make it one of their priorities in 2013 to get on board.


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Monday 16 November 2020
Our pick of the week’s biggest stories affecting Aussie equity markets
IN FOCUS: TELSTRA SPLITS INTO THREE
What’s going on?
Telstra is undertaking a major restructure, splitting itself into three separate entities:
- InfraCo Fixed will own the physical infrastructure assets: the ducts, fibre, data centres, subsea cables etc.
- InfraCo Towers will own the mobile infrastructure like towers.
- ServeCo(currently a placeholder name) will own the active parts of Telstra’s mobile phone business including its radio access network and spectrum assets that maintain the network’s coverage.
The reason for the restructure is simple: the National Broadband Network (NBN) will likely be sold to a private entity sometime in the future. Some analysts saying as soon as after the next election. Telstra wants to buy it – but there’s a snag.
Last year Federal Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said the NBN cannot be owned by a vertically integrated telco. The split will allow InfraCo to buy the NBN
It’s likely the restructure will be in place by late next year.
What’s the backstory?
In 2010 Telstra was forced to sell its copper and cable broadband networks to the government-owned NBN Co. The 2013 federal election saw the LNP and Labor vie over the best plan; Kevin Rudd promising an NBN made purely from optic fibres, Tony Abbott promising a cost-cut version using the old copper network.
Abbott won, and since then the NBN’s costs have blown out. Ironically, taxpayers have now paid $5billion more than the Rudd version, mainly because it’s expensive to fix outdated technology. It’s also very slow: our download speeds rank Australia 62nd in the world behind Uruguay.
The NBN is yet to make a profit, in February it reported a half-year net loss after tax of $2.8 billion – the latest in a series of multibillion-dollar losses. The latest half-year result was better, but still a $648 million loss.
It’s hoped if Telstra takes it over, the NBN would deliver a better service and become more efficient.
What does it mean going forward?
Analysts and investors reckon the split is a good idea – evidenced by Telstra’s share price jump 3% to $3.08 after confirming its full-year profit forecasts along with announcing the split.
Chief Executive Andy Penn has also flagged a move into the energy sector – selling the power Telstra helps generate to consumers. Health is another area set to get some attention: Telstra Health’s seen a spike in use this year thanks to the pandemic, with many more of us attending virtual GP consultations.
EUROPEAN UNION TAKES ON AMAZON
The European Commission’s accusing Amazon of an antitrust violation. They say “the use of non-public marketplace seller data allows Amazon to avoid the normal risks of retail competition and to leverage its dominance in the market”.
Amazon disagrees with the allegations saying they will “continue to make every effort to ensure it has an accurate understanding of the facts.”
The Commission is also opening a second antitrust investigation into Amazon to look at whether they’re giving preferential treatment to its own retail offers and marketplace sellers that use its logistics and delivery services – specifically in relation to “Buy Box”.
If found guilty Amazon would be facing a fine equal to 10% of their annual global revenue: $28 billion.
REA GROUP GETS SERIOUS ABOUT INDIA
REA Group, a subsidiary of Newscorp that grew out of realestate.com.au has its sights set on the subcontinent.
REA’s been in India since 2017 with a minor stake in local company Elara Technologies.
- Housing.com servicing the biggest cities
- PropTiger.com for new developments
- Makaan.com servicing smaller cities.
After three years, REA’s decided the Indian market is ripe for the picking. REA’s set to take a controlling interest in Elara, which could be between 47.2% and 61.1% depending on how many minority shareholders accept REA’s offer.
It’s part of a larger strategy; REA’s already got a digital presence in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, China, Singapore and North America.
PFIZER ANNOUNCES VACCINE
Pfizer is the first vaccine developer to release Phase 3 data with clinical trials showing it’s 90% effective. If all goes well they could be producing up to 600 million doses for the U.S. Following the announcement shares in Pfizer closed up nearly 8%, valuing the stock at $39.20USD apiece.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla picked a great time to sell his stock – making $5.6 million as the share price soared as high as 15%. He did it through a scheduled disposal via Rule 10b5-1. Rule 10b5-1 allows insiders of publicly-traded corporations to set up a trading plan for selling stocks they own, and avoid accusations of insider trading.
Moderna has released their Phase 3 results this month, Astra Zeneca’s expected to follow suit by the end of the year.


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Internal facebookosbornezdnet – Facebook was in the headlines for releasing the data of the users online. All the data includes the full name of the users, date of birth, mobile number, and all other personal details. The company gave an official statement about the old data being released which was scraped in 2019.
Moreover, it is a functionality issue in the company’s user base. In addition, an internal email was accidentally leaked by Facebook to a journalist. These leaks show the true intentions of the company to show the data scrapping as a normalized event.
Table of Contents
Internal Facebook Osborne Zdnet
Charlie Osborne is a cybersecurity journalist and also a photographer who writes for ZDNET. She also writes for CNET from London. As published by ZDNET, Facebook is always been at the forefront of all user privacy concerns. Moreover, researchers reveal the information to be belonging to 533 million users. The scraping and posting of online data on April 14 created widespread criticism.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) is also looking into the matter and setting up a committee. In addition, an internal email is also leaked to the media which makes the matter more complex. The committee has sent various queries to the company asking about a breach of conduct. However, the matter came to light as Facebook accidentally revealed the journalists in the internal email discussion.
Raidforums Babuk Usled Europol 500k Ilascubleepingcomputer
Diogo Santos Coelho is the owner of RaidForums, who is a resident of UK. He may be deported to the US on the count of conspiracy, accessibility device fraud, and severe identity theft. raidforums babuk Usled europol 500k ilascubleepingcomputer.
Ionut Ilascu is a technology writer who focuses on cybersecurity and all topics including malware, security defenses, and innovations in information security. As bleeping computer reports, the 21-year-old raidforums founder who is in custody found the company as a 14-year-old. However, in a major announcement, Europol states the company has 500k+ users from hundreds of different databases all around. It is one of the world’s largest hacking forums that are stealing the data.
As of now, it is unclear about the duration of the investigation but the officials made clear the different individual roles in the Raidforums. The 21-year-old was controlling the base since January 1, 2015. Coelho was operating the site with the help of a few administrators, who are helping him in selling and buying stolen goods. The company made a profit by charging fees for various membership tiers and selling credits to access privileged areas of the site.
Bug Synapse Windows Razer Razerabramsbleepingcomputer
Lawrence Abrams, the owner, and editor-in-chief of bleeping computer states about a razer mouse and keyboard that allows becoming a windows admin just by plugging in. Razer is one of the famous brands known for its gaming mouses and keyboards. The company claims that it has more than 100 million users worldwide. In addition, here is zero-day vulnerability in the razer synapse installation that helps users gain system privilege on windows.
System privileges have the highest user rights available on windows to perform any command. If any user gains system privileges on windows, they take complete control and install anything including malware. Moreover, with no response from the users Jonhat discloses zero-day vulnerability on Twitter in a short video.
As a test conducted by Bleeping Computer, it shows to have gained system privileges in just two minutes after plugging in. It must be considered that it is a local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability, it means that you must have a Razer device and physical access to a computer. However,the bug is so easy to exploit as you just need to spend $20 on Amazon for Razer mouse and plug it into Windows 10 to become an admin.
Bleeping Computer publishes about the data of three million users on the FlexBooker a US-based appointment scheduling service. The data was stolen in an attack and is now available on hacker forums for trade. The same intruders are now offering the data claiming to be from another entity.
As Uawrongteam states, the database contains a table with over 10 million lines of customer information. It ranges from payment forms and charges to driver’s license photos. The company sent notifications to customers confirming the attack about the intruders accessing and downloading the amazon cloud storage system. The developers are also pointing out that the information is stolen and available for other purposes.
The FlexBooker attack included the data of about 3.7m accounts on the amazon cloud. The complete data included the email addresses, names, credit card data and mobile numbers.
Hacking and stealing data online is one of the most occurring practices in the current scenario. Many people are falling prey to hackers and are releasing their personal information. The millions of databases across hundreds of platforms are at risk of losing personal information. Moreover, many companies are selling the personal information of users to these hackers for the sake of money.
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Latin America has always been a favourite for travellers, but increased demand will lead to price increases next year, warns one report.
Cheap holidays in Latin America have long been popular among younger people taking a gap-year or as part of a round-world tour. Spanish speakers naturally find the shared language a great boon when it comes to traversing the huge diversity of Latin American countries – although some come to grief when they discover too late that Portuguese is the official language of Brazil! – and the hospitality of the region is appreciated by all.
Latin America holidays also offer a massive variety of landscapes to the traveller, from the majesty of the Andes and the Inca Trail to the stylish cosmopolitan tango bars of Buenos Aires and the golden beaches of Rio de Janeiro. Internal flights appear ridiculously cheap to western wallets and cheap hotels and hostels abound.
Have a care though – a recent report by Carlson Wagonlit Travel warned that cheap holidays in Latin America will not be as cheap as they once were in 2012. The company’s global 2012 Travel Price Forecast, released this week, found that the cost of hotels, flights, car hire and train travel were all set to increase globally, with the highest percentage rise found in Latin America. Next year, flights to Colombia will be increasing in price by 11.4 per cent, as demand soars and supply contracts – there may be a business opportunity for an enterprising airline there, if anyone’s paying attention!
As Brazil prepares to host the 2014 World Cup, massive infrastructure projects are underway, all with the aim of improving the tourism experience for visitors. Sadly, one downside of this is that hotel prices are set to increase by 24 per cent in the first half of next year and by the end of 2012 they may have increased by some 34 per cent, researchers said.
Luckily price rises are not going to be quite as dramatic elsewhere. The report said that the Asia-Pacific region will remain fairly stable, with only an overall 3.8 per cent increase in air fares next year, while Europe’s flights will only become 3.7 per cent more expensive.


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Vitrolife estimates that sales in the second quarter will amount to about 40-50% of the corresponding period last year in local currency and that sales recovery will continue during the rest of the year.
In connection with the interim report for January - March 2020, Vitrolife announced a large reduction in inflow of orders due to covid-19 during the beginning of the second quarter. Sales during the first weeks of April amounted to approximately one third of the corresponding period last year and the company then informed that the second quarter is expected to be very weak. Since the beginning of April, a slow recovery in the number of IVF treatments in the world has been noted, although there are major regional differences. The recovery is driven, among other things, by easing restrictions in many countries, but is limited by, among other things, safety measures at clinics and patients' uncertainty. "We have seen a recovery since the beginning of April and we expect the recovery to continue for the rest of the year, but it is difficult to estimate how quickly IVF clinics will be back in normal operation with treatments," says Thomas Axelsson, CEO of Vitrolife.
The company estimates that the vast majority of patients that now postpone IVF treatments will complete these at a later date. The company estimates that the long-term market outlook is essentially unchanged and Vitrolife therefore expects a continuously expanding market, which in monetary terms is expected to grow by 5-10 per cent per year for the foreseeable future.
Gothenburg, June 3, 2020
VITROLIFE AB (publ)
Thomas Axelsson, CEO
This information was distributed by Cision http://www.cisionwire.se/


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BRUSSELS. Russian oil in China, and China in Russia. The conflict in Ukraine and the decisions that the international community has taken in response has redesigned logic, interests and political-economic penetrations. On the one hand, Moscow has compensated for the lack of European energy purchases by selling oil and gas to Beijing, on the other, the People’s Republic has increased its weight in Vladimir Putin’s Federation. “As of January 2023, China alone supplies nearly half of Russia’s goods imports.” A figure that does not go unnoticed in Frankfurt, where central bank analysts see a strong Russian imbalance towards its neighboring partner.
Even if the experts see in this “Chinese turning point” a reason to believe that the long-term growth prospects for Russia are “reduced”, so far the Asian country is representing a lifeline for Russia. Since the Western restrictive measures came into effect, “the volume of Russian exports of oil, its main export product, has actually increased despite EU and G7 sanctions”. This is because Moscow has responded by redirecting flows from Europe to China and Turkey, as well as new trading partners in Africa, the Middle East and India. Also in China, Gazprom has started pumping in more natural gas, thus reducing the backlash from lower sales to the EU.
But in doing so, Russia has made itself “more dependent” on non-sanctioning commercial partners, one above all, if it is true that 50% of commercial imports are “made in China”. The scenarios are not the subject of the activity of the ECB and its staff. It is too early to say whether the Russian federation is destined to become a Chinese branch. What emerges is a new Sino-Russian season. From the European borders to the east arrive huge energy supplies functional to the functioning of the dragon’s economy, which reciprocates with commercial support capable of alleviating the sanctions. At the moment it looks like a win-win formula, which satisfies both parties. It remains to be seen who has the most to gain, but certainly for the Chinese this commercial penetration can acquire a strategic value.
Moreover, all of this complicates things at home in the EU, which is determined to discuss with Beijing the relations to maintain and maintain on a bilateral level. The leaders of France and Spain, Emmanuel Macron and Pedro Sanchez, have already visited the Chinese capital, as well as the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. Everyone would like a friendly China, and the People’s Republic proves it is, without exception. Also of a Russia that has become a market with easy penetration. Putin exposes himself to Chinese power, with all the uncertainties involved.


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Currently , songs purchased from Apple’s online iTunes Music Store can’t be played on portable devices made by other companies. Songs purchased from many other online music stores won’t work on iPods because they similarly use a form of copy-protection that Apple doesn’t support.
Johansen said he has developed a way to get around those restrictions. But unlike with his previous work, which he usually posts for free, the Norway native plans to capitalize on his efforts through his Redwood Shores-based DoubleTwist Ventures, said the company’s only other employee, managing director Monique Farantzos.
SeattleP-I has a more detailed APWire report: Hacker says he’s cracked iTunes, iPod restrictions – pdf


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Donald Trump urged Spain to build a wall along the Sahara desert
Trump Jr. mocks sexual assault claim against Kavanaugh
Dagga officially legal for private use in SA
Kavanaugh accuser comes forward as Democrats seek to block SCOTUS nomination
Kenyan Marathon Master Eliud Kipchoge Smashes World Record
NYU grad facing jail for allegedly ripping 'sick' Mugabe
05 November 2017, 01:10 | Tara Lloyd
American arrested in Zimbabwe for 'insulting Robert Mugabe'
Zimbabwean police on Friday charged US human rights activist and television producer Martha O'Donovan with attempting to overthrow the government of President Robert Mugabe by allegedly sending out a tweet deemed to be offensive, according to lawyers. She later said O'Donovan faced additional charges of subverting a constitutionally elected government.
Lawyer Rose Hanzi told the court the subversion charge was illegal because police did not inform Ms O'Donovan of it when she was taken from her home in the capital, Harare, on Friday morning.
The charge of subversion carries up to 20 years in prison. He added that his client had formally been charged with insulting the president.
O'Donovan, who attended New York University and moved to Zimbabwe previous year, said the allegations are "baseless and malicious" because someone is still posting on the Twitter account.
O'Donovan is accused of referring to Mugabe when she tweeted about a "Goblin" whose wife and step-sons imported an expensive auto. The account was active on Friday and Saturday even though O'Donovan is in custody. Zimbabwe authorities say they believe O'Donovan is the author of the tweet based on her IP address.O'Donovan, who is white, has denied this, and matigary has continued to tweet since O'Donovan was jailed.
The alleged tweet follows online reports that Mugabe's two sons, Robert Jr and Chatunga, have imported at least one luxury vehicle from neighboring South Africa.
It was the first arrest since Mugabe last month appointed a cybersecurity minister, a move criticized by activists as targeting social media.
The lawyer says O'Donovan has worked with local social media outlet Magamba TV, whose target audience is youth.
New Amazon service lets delivery people into your home
But imagine if a courier could temporarily be given access to your home, so they could drop off your package and leave. If everything checks out, the cloud grants permission by sending a message back to the camera, which starts recording.
Here's the First TV Spot for the Xbox One X
Microsoft will bring free Xbox One X enhancements to four Xbox 360 games playable through Xbox Backward Compatibility. As revealed at E3, all titles that support system link still support it, including cross-generationally.


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T-Mobile today announced that the Google Nexus 5 smartphone will be available online beginning November 14 and in stores starting on November 20. T-Mobile is asking for a down payment of $41.99 followed by 24 monthly payments of $17. The total for these payments equals $449. By way of comparison, Google sells the T-Mobile-compatible Nexus 5 unlocked directly for $349/$399, depending on the storage option. T-Mobile is only offering the 16GB model.
To some extent I'd guess it's the convenience of not having to wait for shipping, but sadly, for most, it's probably lack of knowledge. Saving $100 is well worth waiting 3 days or whatever shipping time is. I doubt many people would pay an extra 100 i... (continues)
Not saying I even agree with what I am saying, because I wouldn't do it. But there are those who cannot come up with the full cost of the N5, and could afford to pay it over 22 months. So for them it works, and even at the inflated price, its a damne... (continues)


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President Donald Trump and his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, have swiftly and starkly distinguished their criminal justice rhetoric and policies from those of their predecessors. President Trump and Attorney General Sessions have traded on racist stereotypes and notions that criminals have been emboldened in recent years in the wake of the Obama Administration’s purported lenience in law enforcement and sentencing. In doing so, the Trump Administration has heightened the imperative for criminal justice reform, particularly for policies designed to reduce the numbers of people in jails and prison, the most urgent civil rights and racial justice issue of the past forty years.
The export option will allow you to export the current search results of the entered query to a file. Different
formats are available for download. To export the items, click on the button corresponding with the preferred download format.
By default, clicking on the export buttons will result in a download of the allowed maximum amount of items.
To select a subset of the search results, click "Selective Export" button and make a selection of the items you want to export.
The amount of items that can be exported at once is similarly restricted as the full export.
After making a selection, click one of the export format buttons. The amount of items that will be exported is indicated in the bubble next to export format.


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How safe is our food?
Between bacterial outbreaks, viral pandemics, irradiation and the continuing controversy surrounding food additives and genetic modification, it seems that the safety of what we consume regularly comes into question.
The issue of food safety is a multi-faceted and cross-dimensional issue, covering many disparate areas and a plethora of often-conflicting scientific data. Since this issue affects each and every human being alive today, the question that needs to be asked is: "How safe is the food we eat?"
Each year in Australia, about 4 million people become sick through poor food handling, costing the community nearly $3 billion through lost earnings and ensuing medical expenses. In NSW alone, the incidence of food poisoning in 2002 was over 1 million cases, costing the community some $765 million in total.
And some of these food poisoning outbreaks can also have tragic results. For example, a serious outbreak of food-borne illness occurred in 1994"“95 in an uncooked fermented sausage product, which had been improperly processed. In this incident, a four-year-old girl died and 23 children were hospitalised. At least 150 cases of illness from the same cause were identified.
In response to such incidents, most states' food safety regulations were tightened in the late '90s, requiring all food business to have an approved food safety plan. But the complexity of the regulations and the competing priorities for food proprietors meant actual compliance has been relatively low. Moreover, the globalisation of the food trade is multiplying the opportunities for international food safety crises to occur and to multiply almost exponentially. And that is just one side of the food safety coin. The other side, of course, is the argument about the safety, or maybe, the inherent lack due to food additives.
It has been estimated that most people in the West eat the equivalent of between 12 and 36 aspirins a day in the form of food additives. And only 60 per cent of these have been adequately tested for safety.
But food additives are not altogether new. Thousands of years ago the Chinese used ethylene and propylene produced by kerosene combustion to ripen bananas and peas. In Britain in the Middle Ages beer was flavoured for the first time with an additive called hops to cries of "˜adulteration!' from outraged brewers of the day.
Recently, Swedish tests found the chemical acrylamide in some starch-based foods cooked at high temperatures — including biscuits, potato crisps, chips and breakfast cereals.
But the Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA) says there was no need for panic.
"Our advice to the public is that the old advice of eating a balanced and varied diet with plenty of fruit and vegies is the way to go," said the authority's spokesman, Michael Dack. "I suspect that the cholesterol clogging the arteries is going to get them before the acrylamide does."
Following the Swedish test, a United States consumer group reported tests on a range of fast foods and found McDonald's chips had the highest levels of acrylamide.
On its website, the US-based Centre for Science in the Public Interest carries details of tests that found McDonald's chips in its US stores had a higher level of acrylamide than 12 other foods.
A large serve of McDonald's fries had seven micrograms of acrylamide, which is used to produce plastics and dyes and, in small amounts, to purify drinking water. The US Environmental Protection Agency sets a limit of 0.12 micrograms for water. McDonald's Australia has repeatedly said its chips are cooked differently here.
But does our food really need the chemical helping hand, and do the additives harm us? Generally speaking, food additives fall into two broad categories: those which prevent food going bad (by stopping mould, bacteria or rancidity) and those which make what we eat more appealing in colour, flavour and texture. Their use has increased along with the boom in processed foods, so that in the US for example there are now some 4000 of these chemicals shaken, dripped and stirred into the food.
Unlike the chemicals used on the farm as pesticides, food additives are not designed to be toxic — except the fungicidal and antibacterial ones. These aptly named preservatives prevent micro-organisms like the botulism bacteria growing on preserved food like ham and bacon.
But we know very little about the long-term low dose effects of adding chemicals to our food. Some colours are associated with food allergies and what is considered safe in one country may fail the grade in another. Others like "˜E123' (amaranth — US Red Dye No 2) are outlawed in Russia, Malaysia and the US because it is linked with cancer, miscarriages and birth defects in humans. Yet this same compound was used in Australia in a well-known blackcurrant drink, which was promoted as a health-giving drink suitable for pregnant women and young children.
Each country is susceptible to the pressures from the food industry and from consumers. In Australia, the US and Canada there are consumer groups studying all aspects of food additives, including the "˜hidden' additives angle. These are the chemicals which may come into our food from pesticide residues, from contact with wrappings like cellophane, from cosmetic chemicals injected into fruit skin to give colour, from wax burnishes used to polish up the skin of fruits, and the possible hazards of using irradiation to preserve fruit and other foods. Some groups, notably Pollution Probe in Canada, the Consumers' Union in the US and the Australian Consumers' Association, have brought out publications for people to use when they go shopping so they can make informed decisions about what they buy.
At least when it comes to additives, the consumer has a choice of what they will and won't buy. When it comes to microbiological additives, unfortunately for the unsuspecting consumer, the free will and choice is totally absent from the decision making process. The fact is that in relation to bugs in our food, they are an additional extra whether we want them or not.
According to a major review a couple of years ago in the International Journal of Food Microbiology, it identified four demographic groups to be at the greatest risk of food-borne illness. These were the very young, the elderly, pregnant women and the immuno-compromised. The review also noted that the case fatality ratio for food-borne bacterial gastroenteritis outbreaks in nursing homes was 10 times greater than for the general population.
According to Ross Peters, Technical Director of food quality testing company Food Operations, within the developed world, Australia's standards for food handling are in the "upper half, but not the top, such as places like the Scandinavian countries". Having said that, Peters also notes that "Viruses are of greater concern than most other adversaries in the food preparation and/or supply chain." This has been echoed in the recent food scares overseas that are gripping the mass media almost on a daily basis; the bird flu or avian virus, so-called "˜mad-cow disease' (or BSE) and even the deadly SARS virus, which has been blamed on a local Chinese delicacy — the wild feline-like creature known as the Civet.
To add to this concern is that the disinfectants and sanitisers that have been used for many years to destroy food-infecting pathogens are becoming less and less beneficial in this task, due to the pathogens developing a natural resistance to these compounds.
Although this process may take decades, Peters says that "Mother Nature is a fantastic proponent for survival of the fittest, so all micro-organisms at some time will develop resistance to adverse environments such as sanitising solutions."
For the moment though, one of the biggest problems is not just the resistance of food poisoninng pathogens; it is the fact that statistics show food poisoning occurrences are on the rise. According to Peter Sutherland, manager of the food safety watchdog, Safefood NSW, "There has been an increasing incidence in both the severity and number of food safety problems in Australia." Apart from the sometimes serious health affects, there is also the issue of community confidence levels being eroded by continuing cases of mass food poisoning outbreaks. As Sutherland points out, "confidence in food safety underpins all other attributes" of society.
And this too has become one of the key points in this debate. The question of what are the real levels of safety of the food we eat is a fundamental question that goes to the heart of most people's basic and primal concerns about themselves and the society in which they live. Community perceptions are based on what they hear or read in the media and mass food poisoning cases are often front-page stories exploited by the tabloid press for all they are worth.
Notwithstanding all the media hype, in terms of safety, there may well be nothing more crucial to a human being than the safety of what they consume on a daily basis. The facts show that food poisoning cases are on the rise and that the severity of these cases is also on the increase — a situation that organisations such as SafeFood NSW have found not only cost lives, money and medical trauma, but has also increased community anxiety levels about the quality and integrity of all food.
There are many reasons why food poisoning occurs — from improper handling procedures, to incorrect packaging, lack of proper employee training and bacterial resistance or in some cases just because of plain old bad luck. What is known though is that because of globalisation, trade is on the increase and with that increase comes an increase in food trade as well. This means that food is no longer only coming from countries which have similar high hygiene standards and stringent preparation laws as Australia, Europe and North America. It seems that concerns about food safety, just like the food-borne pathogens themselves may well be with us for quite some time to come.
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BlackBerry plans to lay off an unspecified number of staff in its devices unit, as it attempts to make that business profitable, while expanding in other areas.
A look ahead to this week's Big Google Thing in San Francisco on May 28 and 29.
China’s Oppo is not resting on its laurels with the unveiling of its R7 series yesterday in Beijing. The smartphone benefits from a maturing set of technologies and will compete against LG’s G4 flagship when it is released later this year.
A mysterious Apple smartphone posted to the company’s official website has the Internet convinced it could be the successor to the iPhone 5C.
LG has commenced a global roll out of its flagship G4 smartphone, but Australia will have to wait until the second half of 2015 before its local release.
Upon learning of Reddit's plan to change its rules to prohibit harassment and make the site friendlier, some users reacted with resentment and confusion.
Vodafone is adding three 4G smartphones to its introductory plans in an effort to drive Internet traffic on its network.
Optus and Vodafone spokespeople confirmed to Good Gear Guide support for Wi-Fi Calling in Australia is coming, with Optus expected to make the announcement soon in “mid-2015”
Telstra is fending off competition from Optus with the introduction of Internet sharing plans and bundled content packages.
Following the global no-show of Sony’s Z4 flagship is the global unveiling of the Xperia C4, a phablet lacking in tough credentials, but one versed in the art of the ‘selfie’.
Ambitious LG is aiming to follow the success of last year’s G3 with its 2015 flagship, the G4. Improvements have been made across the board to the display, cameras, the processor and the design.
OnePlus has abandoned its inviteonly ordering system for its One smartphone up until it launches its successor, the announced OnePlus 2.
A plan by Qualcomm to get Samsung Electronics to make its Snapdragon 820 chip could lead to faster smartphones, offering longer battery life by early next year.
Microsoft will open its first retail flagship store outside of the US in Sydney as it competes against the shop presences of Apple and Samsung
Following lavish global launches from Samsung and HTC comes the quiet unveiling of Sony’s Xperia Z4 flagship in its home country of Japan.
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Peter Lik, Phantom
Photographer Peter Lik is in the news for selling a photograph for 6.5 million dollars. This is two million more than the previous record-holder by Andreas Gursky.
Caution about this event is being urged in the press as Lik is not known to the auction houses who sell the million dollar photographs by Gursky, Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall. The sale was private and to an anonymous buyer, in other words, not verifiable.
So who is Peter Lik? According to his website he is “world-renowned, highly awarded, and boasting a huge international following.” This modest assertion is backed up by his fourteen shops across the US, including Miami, Las Vegas and Beverly Hills, where he sells his landscapes of canyons, deserts and sunsets. Lik’s work is “commercial-picturesque”, a genre that services the tourist trade with framed prints, postcards and calendars.
He is not alone in this market, Ken Duncan follows a similar model, flogging over-saturated traditional landscapes, broadly derived from Ansel Adams’ epic style. Like Duncan, Lik is an Australian, but long a resident of Las Vegas where his simplistic visuals and boosterist marketing are a natural fit.
Peter Lik’s journey as a photographer has taken him from humble beginnings in his native Australia to the summit of international landscape photography… he decided to settle in Las Vegas, centrally located to the landscapes he loves so much. The rest is photographic history.
The mainstream art world is agog about Lik’s good fortune, so different from its own conceptual approach. But does it do any harm? Lik sells his visual pop music to an appreciative but unsophisticated public who can purchase his images at almost any price point, from $100 up to…$6.5 million. That’s pretty democratic. Try walking out of a gallery with a $100 Gursky.
Peter Lik, Ghos
from Peter Lik’s website


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The government has released new eating guidelines, as it does twice a decade, and it seems under the crushing weight of the obesity epidemic, the advice can be boiled down to a simple, two word set of instructions: “eat less.”
While there are some specific guidelines about what to eat in your smaller portions, the New York Times points out that the USDA has always been a bit reticent to dissuade Americans from shoving food in their collective faces due to the heavy sway held by the food lobby. A NYU nutrition expert lauds the move:
“They are blunter here than they’ve ever been before, and they deserve credit for that,” said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University and a critic of government nutrition guidance. “They said, ‘Eat less!’ I think that’s great, and to avoid oversized portions. That’s the two best things you should do.”
The changes are many, and some are obvious, such as reducing sodium content and cutting down on trans fats. The guidelines also make the suggestion that 50% of meals be comprised of fruit and/or vegetables. Another nutritionist commented:
“Before, the dietary guidelines said eat more fruits and vegetables but that could mean add a slice of tomato to your hamburger,” she said.
Also recommended is upping your intake of whole grains in lieu of processed ones, and consuming more seafood. Nestle makes some good points in the NYT piece, but she does come off as a bit of a killjoy. After advising readers to “eat less junk food” (breakthrough!) she goes on to say:
“Cut back on cheese, hamburgers, pizza, cookies and pastries.”
Are the new USDA guidelines a step in the right direction, or are they still not enough in the land of eighty-eight cent Cheesy Beef Melts and buck McDoubles?


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Bloomberg today takes a look at how Apple is leveraging the buying habits of iTunes users to help advertisers deliver targeted ads to iPhone users.
Relying on the music, videos and apps that customers are downloading from its iTunes, App Store and iBooks helps Apple sketch a behavioral profile that can be paired with appropriate promotional messages. On its website, Apple says its “standard targeting options” include demographics, application preferences, music passions, movie genre interests, television genre interests and location.
The report highlights an ad campaign for Dove Men+Care soap which will use iTunes buying habits to zero in on married men “who are in their late 30s and have children.”
“Apple then overlays that with the iTunes information and targets quite well and quite surgically,” said Rob Candelino, marketing director at Unilever, based in London and Rotterdam.
Apple doesn’t share information on individuals, Candelino said. Instead, Unilever can choose to advertise in certain “buckets” of applications, such as those on news or entertainment, based on characteristics of its users.


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It must be at least a week since we last had a Google rumor, so Wired comes to our rescue with this juicy piece of gossip that involves Apple. They’re suggesting that Steve Jobs will likely, use Monday’s conference to tell the world about a partnership with Google.
One announcement I’m almost sure of, however : A far reaching, cloud computing partnership with Google. Both companies have been hinting about it for months, and it makes perfect sense…Google runs cloud based hardware and software better and cheaper than anyone in the world right now. How does it make money? By getting as many people as possible looking at advertising alongside search and other various software offerings. Imagine all the traffic from the following: You buy a Mac and you automatically get a free Google account.


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Illinois Dispensaries Sell $1.5 Billion Worth Of Cannabis In 2022
The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation announced last week that the state’s cannabis dispensaries sold more than $1.5 billion worth of regulated marijuana products in 2022, setting new records for all categories tracking the performance of the state’s regulated cannabis industry.
Adult-use cannabis dispensaries in Illinois in 2022 totaled $1,552,324,820, up about 12% from the year before. Last year’s $1.5 billion total was 131% higher than sales recorded by pot retailers in 2020, the first year of regulated recreational marijuana sales in Illinois. Sales figures do not include taxes levied on cannabis products, which are reported separately by the Illinois Department of Revenue.
“When I signed the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act into law in 2019, we set out on an ambitious goal: to create the most equitable and economically prosperous cannabis industry in the nation. Our data from 2022 shows that we are well on our way towards making that idea a reality,” said Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement. “Not only did we break our previous sales record by more than 12% with a total of more than $1.5 billion, we also saw the first of our social equity adult use cannabis dispensaries open their doors for business — paving the way for an even stronger 2023.”
Illinois Sales Totals Set New Annual Records
Data from the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) show that by November 2022, recreational marijuana sales at Illinois cannabis dispensaries had exceeded records set in 2021 in all categories tracked by the agency. Licensed cannabis dispensaries set new records for sales totals to both Illinois residents and visitors from out of state. Records were also set for the number of cannabis items sold by licensed dispensaries and for monthly sales totals.
In total, 36,435,129 items were sold in Illinois adult-use cannabis dispensaries in 2022, an increase of 20% from 2021. Sales to Illinois residents totaled $1,073,132,436 in 2022, an increase of almost 14% from 2021, while sales to out-of-state residents totaled $479,192,383, up nearly 10% compared to the previous year.
“This marks the second straight year that Illinois’ adult use cannabis industry has seen record-setting growth, and we are excited for what the future holds for the most equitable cannabis industry in the country,” said Mario Treto, Jr., Secretary of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. “We are optimistic the industry will only continue to flourish in 2023, as we welcome more dispensaries to Illinois.”
Currently, 113 adult-use cannabis dispensaries are serving recreational marijuana customers, including the first three social equity cannabis dispensaries that opened in 2022. Nearly 200 retail cannabis licenses, which are reserved for businesses owned by individuals who have been harmed by decades of marijuana prohibition, have been issued. But many of the businesses have so far struggled to raise the capital needed to open a dispensary and begin operations, according to a report from the Chicago Tribune.
While other states including Oregon, California and Massachusetts have seen wholesale cannabis prices plummet because of overproduction, Illinois only has 21 marijuana cultivation sites to serve the entire state’s market. As a result, cannabis prices in the Land of Lincoln have remained steadily high compared to other states.
In addition to the three social equity cannabis dispensaries that opened for business in 2022, another 189 businesses with conditional licensees are in the process of receiving their full dispensary licenses from the IDFPR. Dispensaries are not allowed to commence sales of adult-use cannabis before receiving their full license from the agency.
The IDFPR announced last month that applications for the next round of cannabis dispensary licenses will be accepted starting January 30, 2023. Additional information for prospective applicants is available on the department’s Adult Use Cannabis Program webpage.
#CannabisCommunity #MedicinalCannabis #cbd #thc #sativa #indica #dispensary #weed #WEEDSLISTS #cannabisadvertising #cannabisculture #cannabiz #marijuana #cannabis #dope #pot #mmj


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The Kronofogden – Arbete och/eller fritid LP has been sent off to the pressing plant and at the moment the planned release is early March 2015 on Blindead Productions
Anatomi-71 announce their new LP “Distansen Tilltar” which will be released on D-takt & Råpunk Records early in 2015!! They have also pace up the title track “Distansen Tilltar” with lyrics and a cover originally recorded by Glo
Fredag den 13:e entered the studio this weekend to record their third album. They entered into Fvck Life Studios up in Trollhättan,Sweden and aid down around 14 tracks. With the plans for their album to be released before the summer 2015.
Out Today on Halvfabrikat Records is M:40 – Bär mig till bikten 7″ EP. M:40 are back after their fullength album Diagnos. This piece of plastic gives us two new tracks of raging hardcore/crust from Lidköping. Strictly limited to 300 copies, all hand-numbered.
Halvfabrikat Records set up back in 1999 earlier this year Halvfabrikat opened up a record shop in May. We asked Danne from Halvfabrikat to tell us a bit about their new shop.
Gust despite barely even being back from tour more than a day or two. Gust have announced they are hitting the road again
Irritation New 7″ at press plant now….
Agent Attitude from Uppsala, Sweden play fast and raw hardcore punk. Started out in 2010 and probably the most intense, fucked up, tight and active band from Sweden at the moment due to constant touring around the world and they are on tour again
Trollhättan, Sweden-based Gust this week release their self-titled and second LP via Southern Lord. This breakneck-29-minute-full-length signals the band’s first release on the label and is streaming online in its entirety right now.


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Trinity ramps up marketing with senior hires
Newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror has created two new group-wide senior marketing roles as it accelerates its strategy towards becoming “One Trinity Mirror” following the recent merger of its national and regional divisions.
Neil Jagger will join Trinity Mirror as group newspaper sales and marketing director from Associated Newspapers, where he has been circulation director of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday since 2000.
Jagger will be responsible for consumer and retail marketing and driving retail sales, reporting into chief operating officer Mark Hollinshead, who manages the consolidated national and regional operations.
He will also become a member of the recently formed publishing operations group – which is made up of senior executives from its editorial, advertising and digital teams – to drive the “One Trinity Mirror” publishing strategy, created by new CEO Simon Fox.
Also joining Trinity Mirror’s newly created senior marketing team is former MTV and Natmags marketing director and current WCRS strategy director Zoe Harris.
Harris will become group marketing director, reporting into Jagger. They will both join the business in early 2013.
Trinity Mirror has not had senior marketing roles at the business for at least five years.
Mark Hollinshead says: “Unifying the sales and marketing functions under these senior positions is designed to deliver a One Trinity Mirror publishing model that will help us sell more newspapers.”
Trinity Mirror announced it was to merge its nationals and regionals division in October, which now works under a “unified” management structure.
CEO Simon Fox said at the time he believes the changes will create “One Trinity Mirror”, with a “unique” portfolio of brands and the best structure to develop in the long term. He is due to provide a strategy update in early 2013.


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Check out the companies making the biggest moves midday:
Lululemon — Shares of Lululemon fell 12.85% after the athletic apparel company gave a weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter outlook. In the third quarter, the company beat Wall Street’s expectations on the top and bottom lines.
Beyond Meat — Beyond Meat’s stock dropped 7.93% after being downgraded by Argus to sell from hold. The firm’s analyst cited falling demand amid weaker economic conditions.
Broadcom — Broadcom gained 2.57% after giving an upbeat revenue forecast and reporting better-than-expected quarterly results after the bell Thursday. The chipmaker also increased its dividend by 12.2% and said it would resume stock buybacks.
Tesla — Tesla’s stock rose 3.23%, paring some of the losses it suffered this week. Reuters reported on Friday the electric-vehicle maker will suspend Model Y assembly at its Shanghai plant between Dec. 25 and Jan. 1. Inventory levels at the plant had risen sharply over the summer.
Carvana — Shares of Carvana rose 1.81% after lenders told The Wall Street Journal that they don’t anticipate the online car seller will file for bankruptcy soon. These debtholders are joining together amid reports earlier this week that the company is looking to restructure its debt, the paper said. Carvana had seen success during the pandemic, but rising interest rates and weaker car demand have hurt its performance.
Netflix — Netflix gained 3.14% after being named a “best idea” for 2023 by Cowen and being upgraded by Wells Fargo to overweight from equal weight. Cowen said it sees free-cash flow ramping up next year, while Wells Fargo said content growth would lessen customer churn.
RH — RH, formerly known as Restoration Hardware, rose 3.04% after reporting third-quarter earnings-per-share and revenue that beat expectations. However, the retailer also said it expected business trends to deteriorate.
Coinbase — Shares of the crypto services firm fell 6% after Mizuho downgraded Coinbase and said its price could fall another 30%. Crypto equities such as Coinbase have been under pressure with cryptocurrency prices, as investors digest the macro picture and the latest developments on FTX.
DocuSign — Shares of DocuSign jumped 12.37% after the electronic signature company posted upbeat quarterly results. It also reported better-than-expected billings, subscription renewals and additional sales to existing customers.
Costco — The wholesaler gained 0.33% after Cowen named the stock a “best idea” heading into 2023, noting the company’s focus on value could be a winning strategy as consumers get more price conscious.
AmerisourceBergen — AmerisourceBergen fell 3.01% after Walgreens sold about $1 billion shares of the drug distributor. Walgreens remains its largest shareholder, with its stake now down to 17% from 20%.
Vale — The Brazil-based mining company gained 3.1% after Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock to overweight from equal weight, citing a “cocktail” of positive catalysts such as price momentum for iron ore and China exiting its Covid-zero policy.
Bath & Body Works — Shares of Bath & Body Works gained 0.38% after activist investor Dan Loeb boosted his stake in the retailer. Loeb said he might push for board charge to improve governance issues at the company.
— CNBC’s Carmen Reinicke, Alexander Harring, Tanaya Macheel and Christina Cheddar-Berk contributed reporting.


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Studios and others hoping for a return to the heady days of the early 2000s when DVD sales were on fire have gotten a cold splash of reality from a new study. After plunging an estimated 9% last year, DVDs sales will decline a further 12% in 2010, according to Boston firm Strategy Analytics.
An increase in sales of Blu-ray discs to $6.5 billion worldwide will not stop the free fall of physical media, the firm conjectures, and it recommends that Hollywood move as quickly as possible into the digital realm to offset the decline in disc sales. Jia Wu, an analyst in the Strategy Analytics Digital Consumer Practice, said the following on the matter:
“The Blu-ray format faces greater competition from DVDs than DVDs did from VHS . . . Blu-ray will have to compete with next-generation digital on-demand services. Otherwise, the industry is poised to face the prospect of a worsening home video market in the years ahead.”
Insiders, has your disc collection stopped growing as more digital options have become available in recent years? How much of the DVD’s decline can be blamed on digital delivery versus the recession, the rise of cheaper rental options such as Redbox, and other factors?
(via Home Media Magazine)


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Tesla bosses weigh up Elon Musk's proposal to take the electric car maker private
Tesla's bosses are locked in discussions over taking the firm private
Electric car maker Tesla's bosses are locked in discussions over taking the firm private, as speculation rages over whether founder Elon Musk can find the money.
A deal is likely to require private equity buyers to stump up £54billion, which would make it the biggest takeover in corporate history.
Only a handful of firms could do it, and there is widespread scepticism that any have signed up yet.
Daniel Ives of trading firm GBH Insights said: 'Investors are really trying to get their arms around whether this is feasible, and what kind of form it would take.'
Tesla board members said Musk first mentioned his plan last week, but it was made public on Monday in a series of explosive tweets.
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The impact of national lockdown restrictions in January caused UK business output to fall at a rate not seen since April 2020, according to the latest Business Trends report from accountancy and business advisory firm BDO LLP.
The BDO Output Index, which provides a comprehensive snapshot of business output by weighting macroeconomic data from the UK’s main business surveys, fell by 5.38 points in January to 70.44. This is a seven-month low for the Index. Having borne the brunt of the restrictions, the services sector drove the decline, with output dropping for a third consecutive month in January.
Despite this downturn, economic activity remains significantly higher than it did in April 2020, when the BDO Output Index plummeted to 44.90 points. This is largely because businesses have had time to adapt to the current restrictions, enabling many to continue providing some level of service. BDO’s Services Output Index therefore remains 24.14 points higher than it stood in April 2020 when the first nationwide lockdown took hold.
Elsewhere in the report, the BDO Optimism Index hit a six-month low as it edged downwards from 86.96 to 86.34 points in January. This comes despite the Brexit deal secured at the end of December, which provided some clarity on the UK’s future relationship with Europe. With stories since emerging of difficulties in trading with the EU, optimism may take a further knock as businesses continue to navigate checks, delays and red tape.
Commenting on the results, Richard Rose, partner and head of BDO LLP in the Midlands, said: “While these figures illustrate the severity of the impact that national lockdown restrictions are having on the economy, they also show the resilience of UK businesses – many of which have developed new procedures, products and services to allow them to continue trading.
“With the government expected to outline the nation’s ‘route map’ out of lockdown in the coming weeks and as the UK’s successful vaccination rollout continues, sentiment should rebound providing disruption to trade across the channel is minimized with further government support.”


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ACL Live & C3 Presents bring you
The Head and The Heart
Living Mirage Tour
with Hippo Campus
The Head And The Heart have announced a North American tour for this spring and fall in support of their newly announced album Living Mirage which will be released on May 17th via Reprise Records / Warner Bros. Records. Produced by Live Nation, the 38-city outing will kick off June 21st in Buffalo, NY and make stops in Austin, Denver, Chicago, Atlanta and more, before wrapping October 20th in Toronto, ON.
Every ticket purchased online for The Head and The Heart includes your choice of a CD or digital copy of the new album, Living Mirage, released on 5/17/19. You’ll receive instructions via email on how to redeem your album after ticket purchase.
In celebration of Living Mirage, The Head and The Heart performed a special sold out concert for fans at The Belasco Theater in Los Angeles. You can stream the whole show on The Head and The Heart’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as well as Live Nation’s Facebook page.


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Ideal Standard MENA partners with the Belgian Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai
The partnership agreement, signed by Ahmed Hafez, CEO of Ideal Standard MENA, and Patrick Vercauteren Drubbel, General Commissioner of the Belgian Pavilion Dubai Expo 2020, enables both parties to showcase their drive towards innovation and creativity.
To commemorate the event, Myriam Cops, Director of the Belgian Pavilion Dubai Expo 2020, was welcomed by Frederick Trzcinski, Marketing & Innovation Director of Ideal Standard Middle East Africa, at Ideal Standard Bathroom Design Centre in Dubai.
Following the Covid pandemic, Expo 2020 Dubai, will be the first major global platform to host 192 countries under the theme of ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’, and sub themes of Opportunity, Mobility and Sustainability, enabling the world to become more inclusive and creating a more sustainable future.
In line with the Expo 2020 vision and mission, Ideal Standard will bring inspirational designs and manufacturing excellence to the Belgian Pavilion at the Expo.


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If you’ve wanted to make an authentic German cheesecake in America, the main ingredient has been almost impossible to find without getting a special order of it online. Quark (pronounced “kvark”) is a German staple that not only makes for a delicious cheesecake but is a healthier snack alternative to cottage cheese or Greek yogurt. Germans who have made their new home in the US have craved the taste of this homeland treat, and starting this spring, a new startup company in Southern California is going to put an end to their wait.
Elli Quark showed off their German-style Quark cheese during the Natural Products Expo West show in Anaheim last month after the founder set out to find a healthy snack that wasn’t filled with salt or sugar. Founder Preya Patel Bhakta had a nutritionist recommend cottage cheese, but was put off by the excessive amounts of salt and did not care for the texture. Greek yogurt has also been a favorite among people looking to eat healthier, but uses a large amount of sugar to enhance the flavor.
After making some modifications to cottage cheese, Preya thought that there had to be something similar to what she made already on the market. It turns out that what she had created was very close to the popular German Quark cheese. Since there are not many options for getting this cheese in the US, she headed out to Germany to sample the variety and get a better idea on how the cheese is made.
Due to the differences in the cows milk between the two countries, the manufacturing process of Elli Quark cheese had to be modified slightly. But after hearing the response from Germans visiting their booth at last month’s Expo, it seems that the difference is unnoticeable.
Starting this month, Elli Quark will be rolling out to stores selling natural products around the country. The 80-90 calorie snack will initially be available in five different flavors (plain, strawberry, lemon, red velvet, and pineapple) and will be found next to the cottage cheese section in the diary aisle. While this isn’t the first attempt to bring German Quark cheese to market in the US, some good marketing and product placement on the shelf can make a difference.Sources: Food Navigator-USA, Elli Quark Article Source: German Pulse


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Ever since Siri came out, a lot of third part apps have been appearing claiming to be Siri’s equal and here comes another app which claims to be a taste of Siri on Android named “Cluzee”
The creators calls this app your “intelligent personal assistant” which aims to compete with Apple’s Siri which would deviate people from buying Apple’s iOS devices to buying Android smartphones.
Comparing with Siri, Cluzee has some disadvantages like it’s a third party app which clearly shows it probably won’t be backed up by Google anytime soon. The voice commands Cluzee understands are limited as compared to Siri and Cluzee is a standalone app whereas Siri is deeply integrated to the iPhone 4S smartphone.
Well now you must be wondering, why the post title says “Clumsy Rival’ whereas everyhing looks normal ? . You are going to find out all of that by watching the video below which shows Cluzee in action brought to you by Android Central :-
The app being made by a third party developer explains the buggy performance and limited approaches it understand. Anyways it’s just a start and probably will get better but at least it’s better than Microsoft’s TellMe .
Siri took a long time to mature, similarly Cluzee will also probably become robust and powerful over the time and might become useful enough where at a point Google might officially choose this app for Android’s personal assistant.


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Verizon to show YouTube on phone
Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Beginning next month, Verizon Wireless subscribers will be able to watch the top YouTube clips on their cell phones, the two companies are expected to announce today.
The deal, rumored last month, marks YouTube's leap from the Internet to mobile video. In the past year, the San Bruno startup, which has been bought by Google for $1.65 billion, helped establish video on the Web, playing 100 million clips a day. Now it could help make video on cell phones popular.
"Our customers are going to gravitate to this quickly," said John Harrobin, vice president of digital media for Verizon Wireless.
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Details of the agreement were not disclosed.
Ten YouTube clips at a time will be available through Verizon's V Cast subscription service, which costs $15 a month or $3 per day. YouTube will select the videos based on user suggestions, entertainment value, length and how they will appear on a cell phone, much like the way it picks the top 10 clips featured on the site's front page. The clips will be refreshed regularly, YouTube said.
"It's YouTube's first move into the mobile space," said Steve Chen, chief technology officer and co-founder of YouTube. "For the first time, we'll see user-generated content outside the Web browser experience on a mobile device."
Watching video on small, mobile devices is slowly gaining ground. Apple Computer Inc. sells television shows and movies that can be played on the iPod. Sony's PlayStation Portable, Microsoft's Zune and other portable media gadgets and services such as TiVo to Go also let users watch video on the go. Verizon, Cingular and Sprint, meanwhile, have been offering live television, weather updates, news clips, music videos, movie trailers and highlights from CBS' "Amazing Race" for video-enabled cell phones.
The YouTube clips will join about 2,000 mobile video titles already available to Cingular, Sprint and Verizon Wireless subscribers, according to market research firm Telephia. YouTube, however, will be the first to offer user-generated clips.
During July, August and September, nearly 5.1 million people, about 2.3 percent of U.S. cell phone users, subscribed to mobile television and video services on their phones, according to Telephia. That produced about $140.7 million in revenue.
About 56.7 million people subscribe to Verizon Wireless, though the company declined to disclose how many pay for its premium V Cast service. But it reported it made $1.2 billion from data services -- extra charges for such offerings as decorative wallpapers, games and video clips -- during the quarter that ended Sept. 30. About 20 million customers own video-enabled phones, it said.
Since its inception, YouTube has been criticized for posting copyrighted clips. But YouTube said that won't be a problem with its mobile service. "Both YouTube and Verizon take copyright ownership seriously," said Kelly Liang, YouTube's senior director of business development. "We're confident we'll be able to deliver content that's not infringing."


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Are you an Animal Crossing fanatic who has demonstrated great design skills on your island, and is now looking take those skills to the real world? There’s a job for you.
A chain in Hong Kong selling foodstuffs is recruiting such a person to construct an island in order to promote its products on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the Nintendo game that has taken off all around the world as people stuck at home channel their energies into trading turnips, fishing, and catching bugs.
Yummy House, whose products range from soy sauce to canned abalone and which has eight stores across Hong Kong, posted in a recruitment advertisement (link in Chinese) this week that it is seeking a “game specialist” who is creative, has art skills, and has played Animal Crossing for over 100 hours. The person can work from home and only needs to report to the company three times a week, with salary of HK$20,000 ($2,580) for the one-month post.
“We started planning this in April. Because of the pandemic in Hong Kong, lots of people can’t go out, lots of companies are collapsing, and lots of workers are being laid off or furloughed,“ Savannah Tang, a senior marketing executive in charge of the at Yummy House, told Quartz. “We thought, since so many people don’t have much to do, why don’t we provide this opportunity while doing some soft selling?” She said the company will showcase aspects of the company on the island, such as its products, logistics, factories, and stores, hoping that online interest will translate into real-life sales.
As of today, the company has received 230 applications, 80% of which were from Hong Kong, with the rest coming from countries including the US, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Japan. Most of the applicants are artists, graphic designers, or software designers, according to Tang.
Though people around the world have replaced real-life hang outs with Animal Crossing meetings due to social isolation rules, the game has taken on another purpose in Hong Kong, where public anger at the government continues to boil even as the coronavirus pandemic had put a hold on protests earlier this year. In a display of impressive artistic skills, some players are taking their political grievances to Animal Crossing, where they reconstruct landmark scenes from the protests or create protest-themed items such as banners and the “black bloc” outfits that have come to be associated with the city’s young rebels.
Tang, who is in charge of the initiative, said that she had also received applications from mainland China, where, not only is the game unauthorized, but even listings on ecommerce platforms for Animal Crossing in-game items have been removed, possibly because of the proliferation of Hong Kong protest paraphernalia. Some people, however, have tried to get around that ban by using cryptic names to sell services and items linked to the game. That’s a mark for creativity that Yummy House may consider in its candidate search.
This article was updated to clarify that the job is a one-month post.


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(Washington, D.C.) Driven by improvements in both business performance and expectations for future business conditions, the National Restaurant Associations comprehensive index of restaurant activity rose to its highest level in 22 months in December. The Associations Restaurant Performance Index (RPI) a monthly composite index that tracks the health of and outlook for the U.S. restaurant industry stood at 98.7 in December, up 0.9 percent from November and its strongest level in nearly two years.
The RPIs strong gain in December was the result of broad-based improvements among several index components, said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of the Research and Knowledge Group for the National Restaurant Association. Although restaurant operators continued to report a net decline in same-store sales and customer traffic, both registered their strongest performances since the summer of 2008.
Along with a solid improvement among the current situation indicators, restaurant operators are increasingly optimistic about industry growth in the months ahead, Riehle added. More than a third of restaurant operators expect to their sales to improve in six months, the highest level in more than two years.
The Restaurant Performance Index is based on the responses to the National Restaurant Associations Restaurant Industry Tracking Survey, which is fielded monthly among restaurant operators nationwide on a variety of indicators including sales, traffic, labor and capital expenditures. The RPI consists of two components the Current Situation Index and the Expectations Index. The full report is available online. A video of Riehle providing an update on the RPI and 2010 Restaurant Industry Forecast is also available.
The RPI is constructed so that the health of the restaurant industry is measured in relation to a steady-state level of 100. Index values above 100 indicate that key industry indicators are in a period of expansion, and index values below 100 represent a period of contraction for key industry indicators. Despite the solid improvement in December, the RPI remained below 100 for the 26th consecutive month.
The Current Situation Index, which measures current trends in four industry indicators (same-store sales, traffic, labor and capital expenditures), stood at 97.3 in December up a strong 1.4 percent from November and its highest level since August 2008. However, December still represented the 28th consecutive month below 100, which signifies contraction in the current situation indicators.
Although restaurant operators reported negative same-store sales for the 19th consecutive month, the overall results improved dramatically in December. Thirty-five percent of restaurant operators reported a same-store sales gain between December 2008 and December 2009, well above the 24 percent of operators who reported higher sales in November. Forty-nine percent of operators reported a same-store sales decline in December, down sharply from 65 percent who reported negative sales in November.
Restaurant operators also reported an improving customer traffic performance in December. Thirty percent of restaurant operators reported an increase in customer traffic between December 2008 and December 2009, up from just 21 percent who reported higher customer traffic in November. Forty-seven percent of operators reported a traffic decline in December, down from 62 percent who reported lower traffic in November.
Although restaurant operators reported stronger sales and traffic results in December, capital spending activity continued to drop off. Thirty-one percent of operators said they made a capital expenditure for equipment, expansion or remodeling during the last three months, down from 33 percent last month and the lowest level on record.
The Expectations Index, which measures restaurant operators six-month outlook for four industry indicators (same-store sales, employees, capital expenditures and business conditions), stood at 100.0 in December up from a level of 99.6 registered in the previous two months. December represented the first time in eight months that the Expectations Index reached the 100 level, which means restaurant operators were no longer pessimistic about the six-month outlook for the industry.
Restaurant operators are increasingly optimistic about sales growth in the months ahead. Thirty-five percent of restaurant operators expect to have higher sales in six months (compared to the same period in the previous year), up from 31 percent who reported similarly last month and the highest level in more than two years. In comparison, 21 percent of restaurant operators expect their sales volume in six months to be lower than it was during the same period in the previous year, down from 24 percent who reported similarly last month.
Restaurant operators are also more optimistic about the direction of the economy in the months ahead. Thirty-four percent of restaurant operators said they expect economic conditions to improve in six months, while 18 percent expect economic conditions to worsen during the next six months. Last month, 27 percent of operators said they expected the economy to improve in six months, while 19 percent expected economic conditions to deteriorate.
Despite the positive outlook for sales and the economy, restaurant operators plans for capital expenditures dipped somewhat this month. Thirty-nine percent of restaurant operators plan to make a capital expenditure for equipment, expansion or remodeling in the next six months, down from 41 percent who reported similarly last month.
The RPI is released on the last business day of each month, and more detailed data and analysis can be found on Restaurant TrendMapper (www.restaurant.org/trendmapper), the Association’s subscription-based service that provides detailed analysis of restaurant industry trends.
Source: National Restaurant Association


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Walmart pulled a highly controversial T-shirt from their website that read “Rope. Tree. Journalist. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED” after the Radio Television Digital News Association called them out on the big problem with the shirt’s message, reports NPR.
Walmart was selling the shirt with a company called Teespring that acted as a third-party seller, according to the RTDNA. Within the day of being notified, the shirt was gone. A Walmart spokesperson said the shirt “clearly violates our policy,” and that the company is taking a good, hard look at all the other products it sells from Teespring.
The shirt’s appearance on Walmart’s website prompted a swift reaction from the RTDNA, who sent a letter to inform the retail giant of the potential damage the shirt’s message could promote. RTDNA Executive Director Dan Shelley wrote that “nearly three dozen journalists have been physically assaulted so far this year across the country merely for performing their Constitutionally-guaranteed duty to seek and report the truth. . . T-shirts or any other items bearing such words inflame the passions of those who either don’t like, or don’t understand, the news media. At worst, they openly encourage violence targeting journalists.”
You GUYS, it's funny because you know, if a journalist is doing their job and that involves something/someone you support being seen in an unflattering light, then you kill them! You know, lynch them! Ha ha! Isn't it so funny? FakeNewsMAGAbuildawallrocketman, amiright? https://t.co/9TxoSeMuuc
— Theresa (@TlAsselin) December 1, 2017
While the RTDNA did acknowledge Walmart is technically within their legal rights to continue selling the shirt, it “doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.”
The shirt has been around for awhile, unfortunately. It first gained attention and notoriety last November when a Reuters photographer snapped a picture of a man wearing the shirt at a meeting of Trump supporters two days before the presidential election.
The photo gained quite a bit of attention because it followed numerous reports of journalists being assaulted or harassed while reporting on the campaign trail in 2016. Months later, President Trump would escalate his ongoing scuffle with media outlets like The New York Times by calling them “the enemy of the American people" on Twitter.
Again, our photographer took this in Minnesota. I had the location wrong the first time. Apologies. pic.twitter.com/OwuCt7WAUr
— Patricia Zengerle (@ReutersZengerle) November 6, 2016
Shortly after the photo gained infamy last November, The Daily Beast reported the shirt had been taken down from Teespring’s site. It came back around a week ago, selling for $22.95 with the promise that it would arrive by Christmas time. The shirt has also been removed from the Teespring site. In its place sits a message that says the shirt is “no longer available due to content issues.”
It’s not the first item to be taken down from Teespring’s website. A large number of other shirts were removed earlier in August for bearing designs including “a swastika.” The site says it “does not support or allow hate speech on our platform,” which is included in their terms of service.


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A 43-year-old Milwaukee woman with a history of 39 arrests saw her criminal record grow longer Dec. 23 when she was accused of shoplifting from Mayfair Mall and refusing to cooperate with police.
According to the Wauwatosa police report:
Employees at The Buckle overheard the sound of sensors popping off clothing in a fitting room about 7 p.m. The customer left without paying for a pair of jeans, so a saleswoman followed her.
Police arrived and the woman gave false identifying information. They checked out her three large shopping bags and found $415 worth of merchandise taken from mall shops. She also had a crack pipe and spoon with cocaine residue, so she was arrested for retail theft, possession of stolen property, resisting arrest and possession of drug paraphernalia.
She fought against entering a squad car and started screaming suicidal threats. Eventually, Wauwatosa paramedics took her to Froedtert Hospital because she had a panic attack. She had to be restrained and admitted for a mental health evaluation.
Her criminal record includes arrests for theft, resisting arrest and prostitution. The district attorney was expected to review the case and seek charges of habitual criminality.
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Give away medical masks when you place an order. learn more
Semiconductor revenue from wireless communications applications will grow 10.4 percent to $72.6 billion in 2012, compared to $65.8 billion in 2011, according to researcher IHS.
Semiconductor revenue is set to rise by just 0.7 percent in wired communications; 1.3 percent in consumer electronics and by 2.7 percent in automotive electronics. Revenue growth in data processing will be down 1.5 percent and by 17.9 percent in memory multichip packages (MCP), IHS reported.
Because of strong wireless growth, overall global semiconductor revenue this year is expected to rise 3 percent to $320.8 billion, up from $312.2 billion in 2011.
“While most markets are struggling with slow growth or declines in 2012, the wireless segment continues to expand at a healthy pace, driven by strong sales gains for smartphones and media tablets,” said Len Jelinek, director and chief analyst of semiconductor manufacturing at IHS.
He noted that the modest growth forecast for the overall semiconductor market is due to the wireless segment and is not broad-based. As result, semiconductor manufacturers should be cautious about “engaging in any activities that do not support next-generation wireless applications,” Jelinek said.
Semiconductor companies say that the industry appears to have begun the next growth cycle, due in part to encouraging chip demand from the wireless segments, according to the researcher. However, the strength and longevity of the growth cycle will depend on how the global economy performs through the summer.
Although the summer months are not typically the time of year when consumer spending increases for electronics, the season serves as an economic barometer for how consumers will approach their spending during the forthcoming holidays, IHS forecast.


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Day: September 27, 2022
The AMD Ryzen 7000 series desktop CPUs are coming and since you’ll be needing a brand new AM5 motherboard if you’re going for the upgrade,
New Lenovo ThinkStation P620 with Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 series CPU enters Malaysia from RM9,999
Lenovo Malaysia has announced the arrival of the new ThinkStation P620 professional workstation equipped with the latest enthusiast chip from AMD.
MSI Malaysia appoints Phei Yong as ambassador; Celebratory discount codes for multiple series of laptops
MSI Malaysia welcomes content creator Phei Yong to hop on the train and join the dragon family.
Software container adoption is skyrocketing in a post-pandemic world. As of 2022, nearly half of all applications created by mid-size and large companies are containerized.
Malaysia’s official CHERRY distributor is officially bringing in the signature CHERRY MX switches ala carte style into the country.
ECS has announced the latest member of the LIVA All-in-One PC series: the LIVA G24-MH610. Let’s take a look at what it has to bring


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TRENTON – Legislation sponsored by Senators Jeff Van Drew and Jim Whelan to exempt from corporate business taxes out-of-state bus companies that bring tourists to destinations within New Jersey – such as Atlantic City casinos – was approved unanimously today by the full Senate.
The idea behind the bill (S-1124) is to exempt bus companies that carry passengers, such as senior citizens, from Philadelphia, New York City and Virginia to Atlantic City for a day trip. The legislation is intended to encourage more business, travel and tourism to Atlantic City.
“The out-of-state buses which carry casino patrons to Atlantic City represent a vital part of our local economy, bringing thousands of tourists to the resort each year,” said Senator Van Drew (D-Cape May/Atlantic/Cumberland). “We need to do our part to make sure the buses continue to run, and that bus companies aren’t hampered by New Jersey’s tax structure when they’re delivering much-needed patronage to our casinos.”
“Out-of-state bus companies bring tourists into our city, where they spend money at our shops, our restaurants and casinos,” said Senator Whelan (D-Atlantic). “Especially given the competition we are experiencing from neighboring states, we should be incentivizing these kinds of businesses, not making it more costly for them to operate here.”


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A representative from Ladurée confirmed to Eater that the luxury bakery is indeed opening a location in D.C. Local macaron lovers have awaited the news ever since Ladurée US CEO Pierre-Antoine Raberin first mentioned the possibility of a D.C. location in an interview for The Daily Meal in 2012.
The fancy French import hasn't confirmed the location or anticipated opening date yet, but The Georgetown Metropolitan says it will open in the old Ritz Camera space at 3060 M St. NW in Georgetown.
Ladurée opened in Paris in 1862 and is now one of the most well-known bakeries in the world. It has over 50 locations worldwide, but the D.C. location will be only the fourth in the United States. There are currently two in New York and one in Miami.


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AN INVITE has been given for two new whisky chiefs to visit Speyside.
Moray MP Angus Robertson and MSP Richard Lochhead have issued the invitations to the chief executives of drinks giants Diageo and Chivas Brothers.
The invitations follow a recent meeting with senior managers from Edrington Group who outlined their plans for an iconic £100m development of their Macallan distillery in Speyside.
Both Ivan Menezes of Diageo and Laurent Lacassagne of Chivas Brothers took up their chief executive posts in July 2013.
Planned discussions with the company heads follows round table discussions involving both firms organised by Angus Robertson MP in 2009 aimed at coordinating future plans for the industry, economic and transport development in the region and the promotion of Speyside and brands of Scotch whisky produced in Speyside.
Mr Robertson, who is vice-chairman of the Westminster Parliament’s Whisky Industry Group said: "Speyside is the foremost malt-whisky producing region of Scotland and there is a great future for the brands produced here.
"Given the importance of Speyside to both Diageo and Pernod Ricard, which owns Chivas Brothers, I’m sure their senior management will be delighted to take part."
Mr Lochhead, who is Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and responsible for the food and drink sector added: "Speyside is one of the leading drink and food regions in the world, and we must aspire to match regions such as Champagne, Rioja and Napa Valley."